Wogrim
Smash Lord
I kind of turned this thread into a lazy guide for Dazzle & VirtualDub settings. There's tutorial stuff on YouTube that explains how to use VirtualDub better than I ever could, so if you've never used it before, this is not the place to start.
I recently became interested in maximizing the quality of my recorded stuff on YouTube, so I'm posting here the stuff I've tried.
Video capture:
Dazzle 100 (red one)
Pinnacle Studio 10 Quickstart
720x480, mpeg-2 ("DVD" or whatever, best settings, NOT avi, which makes huge file sizes)
File size is generally around 50 MB per minute
I used to just upload at this point but got tired of interlacing and also became interested in going up to HD on YouTube. YouTube puts your vids in HD if they are at 1280x720. I'll note here, though, that the HD YouTube player is only 480 pixels tall (which is the height of my original captures, so upscaling it to play on the HD player and the subsequent shrinkage should result in something very close to how it looks when I just play it on my computer). So anyways I snooped around for a few hours and found VirtualDub, so that's what I use for editing.
Editing:
VirtualDub (you need a plugin to load mpeg-2 files)
Compression: Divx, configure it to the "HD 720p" settings (if you can't figure this out, search YouTube and it should be mentioned in just about any VirtualDub tutorial)
De-interlacing:
If you're capturing at 480i, your frames basically get interwoven together. This is called interlacing. To best see what this looks like, go to my "Settings 0.1" link at the bottom of the page, watch in HD (remember, that shows it at the original captured size, which makes it easy to see), and pause the video at any point where there's a bunch of motion. It's less noticable while the video is rolling, but I'd still rather have it gone because I do notice it.
So, here's how you deal with interlacing:
0: No deinterlacing. I'm only even listing this for completeness (so you have something to compare the deinterlacing to)
1: "Deinterlace: blend" filter. This basically attempts to give you a frame that "blends" the 2 fields (one field is the odd lines and the other is the even lines, and each are basically half a frame) together, resulting in a frame that
2: "Field Bob: Smooth / Smooth" filter. As far as I know this basically tries to do the same thing as the previous one but in a different manner.
3: "Deinterlace: Duplicate Field 2" filter (or duplicate 1, but I chose 2). Gets rid of one field to give you a progressive picture (you don't get frames blended together at all) but you've sort of lost half your frames. This gives you better detail on moving objects (they're not so blurry) but the motion is choppier.
There is also something called "Bob Doubler" which tries to pull apart the fields and make them their own frames, which doubles the framerate, but since I've heard YouTube plays at 30 fps, I decided to ignore this option because it would most likely either drop frames (and end up being just like #3) or try to blend frames (and be like #1/2).
Resizing:
You need to resize to get HD on YouTube. There's a couple options. Make sure to do this after deinterlacing (if you want to do so) or else the deinterlacing won't come out right).
0: No resize. If you don't want HD, don't resize.
1: "Resize" filter. I've left in on the default "Precise Bicubic: A = -0.75" or whatever type of resizing. If you're going from 480 to 720 pixels tall (for HD), you're multiplying by 1.5, so if you're capturing at 720x480 like I am the new width is 1080. But wait a minute. Don't we need 1280x720 for HD on YouTube? Yes, we do. To not stretch it (I like to keep the aspect ratio), you want to letterbox the sides. So in the bottom left corner of this "resize" filter, put in 1280x720 and it'll give you bars so that YouTube thinks it's a widescreen video and puts it in HD for you.
2: "Warp Resize" filter. This tries to preserve lines when it resizes, I guess to try to keep stuff looking smooth and not pixellated. Hard to say how well it works. You need to add in a resize filter again after this to get the letterboxing.
That's pretty much it for explanations. I've uploaded a video put under all 12 combinations of settings for you to compare. They are titled "Settings d.r" where "d" is the deinterlacing and "r" is the resizing, according to the numbers in their sections.
Settings 0.0: No deinterlacing and no resize.
Settings 0.1: No deinterlacing and regular resize.
Settings 0.2: No deinterlacing and warpsharp resize.
Settings 1.0: Blend deinterlacing and no resize.
Settings 1.1: Blend deinterlacing and regular resize.
Settings 1.2: Blend deinterlacing and warpsharp resize.
Settings 2.0: Smooth field bob deinterlacing and no resize.
Settings 2.1: Smooth field bob deinterlacing and regular resize.
Settings 2.2: Smooth field bob deinterlacing and warpsharp resize.
Settings 3.0: Field duplicate deinterlacing and no resize.
Settings 3.1: Field duplicate deinterlacing and regular resize.
Settings 3.2: Field duplicate deinterlacing and warpsharp resize.
Oh, and if your computer lags when trying to watch HD movies, there's a good chance it's just your computer being ******** (I've noticed mine will often massively fragment YouTube videos).
**** UPDATE 8/13/09 ****
I've done a bit of messing around with capture formats and Deflicker (in-game anti-aliasing sorta thing) so here's some additional vids to compare. They all use Settings 1.1, but with 10Mb/s divx compression. I'm not going to spend my time making vids for all combinations of capture formats and render settings.
(1) Dazzle AVI capture format. Custom Settings: DV compression. The quality slider is locked at like 3600 KB/s or something.
(2) Dazzle AVI capture format. Custom Settings: MJPEG compression. Set slider to 100% quality.
(3) Dazzle AVI capture format. Preset Settings: "Best". Compression is greyed out as MJPEG, and the slider at the bottom shows it at 95%, so it should be slightly worse than (2).
(4) Dazzle MPEG capture format. Custom Settings: MPEG2. Slider maxed out at 10Mb/s.
(5) Dazzle MPEG capture format. "High Quality (DVD)" or something like that. It's greyed out as MPEG2 and the slider is at 6 Mb/s. This is the format I used for capturing most of my vids, including the ones used to make the "Settings" videos in this guide.
Deflicker can be found from the main menu of the game by going to "options" -> "screen settings" or something like that. There is a deflicker in both Brawl and Melee (note that these are all Melee vids, and therefore you might not have the same opinion on Deflicker on vs off in Brawl). Deflicker I'm pretty sure is on by default.
Deflicker On
(1) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZw9besHNEY&fmt=22
(2) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_ez8HrvW_g&fmt=22
(3) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-g7lna7ZVo&fmt=22
(4) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gH6DLg3rio0&fmt=22
(5) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFPpGAqggMY&fmt=22
Deflicker Off
(1) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21ZViORD1Kw&fmt=22
(2) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Wc1wpW2lEw&fmt=22
(3) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwBzPgyPLww&fmt=22
(4) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nYgVkvCKxk&fmt=22
(5) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wafiL_Lp_ww&fmt=22
I'd have to say #2 and #4 are probably the best. #1 seems kinda fuzzy and the other 2 aren't supposed to be as good as them anyways. #1 might look better than #2 and #4 with different render settings, but I doubt it.
I recently became interested in maximizing the quality of my recorded stuff on YouTube, so I'm posting here the stuff I've tried.
Video capture:
Dazzle 100 (red one)
Pinnacle Studio 10 Quickstart
720x480, mpeg-2 ("DVD" or whatever, best settings, NOT avi, which makes huge file sizes)
File size is generally around 50 MB per minute
I used to just upload at this point but got tired of interlacing and also became interested in going up to HD on YouTube. YouTube puts your vids in HD if they are at 1280x720. I'll note here, though, that the HD YouTube player is only 480 pixels tall (which is the height of my original captures, so upscaling it to play on the HD player and the subsequent shrinkage should result in something very close to how it looks when I just play it on my computer). So anyways I snooped around for a few hours and found VirtualDub, so that's what I use for editing.
Editing:
VirtualDub (you need a plugin to load mpeg-2 files)
Compression: Divx, configure it to the "HD 720p" settings (if you can't figure this out, search YouTube and it should be mentioned in just about any VirtualDub tutorial)
De-interlacing:
If you're capturing at 480i, your frames basically get interwoven together. This is called interlacing. To best see what this looks like, go to my "Settings 0.1" link at the bottom of the page, watch in HD (remember, that shows it at the original captured size, which makes it easy to see), and pause the video at any point where there's a bunch of motion. It's less noticable while the video is rolling, but I'd still rather have it gone because I do notice it.
So, here's how you deal with interlacing:
0: No deinterlacing. I'm only even listing this for completeness (so you have something to compare the deinterlacing to)
1: "Deinterlace: blend" filter. This basically attempts to give you a frame that "blends" the 2 fields (one field is the odd lines and the other is the even lines, and each are basically half a frame) together, resulting in a frame that
2: "Field Bob: Smooth / Smooth" filter. As far as I know this basically tries to do the same thing as the previous one but in a different manner.
3: "Deinterlace: Duplicate Field 2" filter (or duplicate 1, but I chose 2). Gets rid of one field to give you a progressive picture (you don't get frames blended together at all) but you've sort of lost half your frames. This gives you better detail on moving objects (they're not so blurry) but the motion is choppier.
There is also something called "Bob Doubler" which tries to pull apart the fields and make them their own frames, which doubles the framerate, but since I've heard YouTube plays at 30 fps, I decided to ignore this option because it would most likely either drop frames (and end up being just like #3) or try to blend frames (and be like #1/2).
Resizing:
You need to resize to get HD on YouTube. There's a couple options. Make sure to do this after deinterlacing (if you want to do so) or else the deinterlacing won't come out right).
0: No resize. If you don't want HD, don't resize.
1: "Resize" filter. I've left in on the default "Precise Bicubic: A = -0.75" or whatever type of resizing. If you're going from 480 to 720 pixels tall (for HD), you're multiplying by 1.5, so if you're capturing at 720x480 like I am the new width is 1080. But wait a minute. Don't we need 1280x720 for HD on YouTube? Yes, we do. To not stretch it (I like to keep the aspect ratio), you want to letterbox the sides. So in the bottom left corner of this "resize" filter, put in 1280x720 and it'll give you bars so that YouTube thinks it's a widescreen video and puts it in HD for you.
2: "Warp Resize" filter. This tries to preserve lines when it resizes, I guess to try to keep stuff looking smooth and not pixellated. Hard to say how well it works. You need to add in a resize filter again after this to get the letterboxing.
That's pretty much it for explanations. I've uploaded a video put under all 12 combinations of settings for you to compare. They are titled "Settings d.r" where "d" is the deinterlacing and "r" is the resizing, according to the numbers in their sections.
Settings 0.0: No deinterlacing and no resize.
Settings 0.1: No deinterlacing and regular resize.
Settings 0.2: No deinterlacing and warpsharp resize.
Settings 1.0: Blend deinterlacing and no resize.
Settings 1.1: Blend deinterlacing and regular resize.
Settings 1.2: Blend deinterlacing and warpsharp resize.
Settings 2.0: Smooth field bob deinterlacing and no resize.
Settings 2.1: Smooth field bob deinterlacing and regular resize.
Settings 2.2: Smooth field bob deinterlacing and warpsharp resize.
Settings 3.0: Field duplicate deinterlacing and no resize.
Settings 3.1: Field duplicate deinterlacing and regular resize.
Settings 3.2: Field duplicate deinterlacing and warpsharp resize.
Oh, and if your computer lags when trying to watch HD movies, there's a good chance it's just your computer being ******** (I've noticed mine will often massively fragment YouTube videos).
**** UPDATE 8/13/09 ****
I've done a bit of messing around with capture formats and Deflicker (in-game anti-aliasing sorta thing) so here's some additional vids to compare. They all use Settings 1.1, but with 10Mb/s divx compression. I'm not going to spend my time making vids for all combinations of capture formats and render settings.
(1) Dazzle AVI capture format. Custom Settings: DV compression. The quality slider is locked at like 3600 KB/s or something.
(2) Dazzle AVI capture format. Custom Settings: MJPEG compression. Set slider to 100% quality.
(3) Dazzle AVI capture format. Preset Settings: "Best". Compression is greyed out as MJPEG, and the slider at the bottom shows it at 95%, so it should be slightly worse than (2).
(4) Dazzle MPEG capture format. Custom Settings: MPEG2. Slider maxed out at 10Mb/s.
(5) Dazzle MPEG capture format. "High Quality (DVD)" or something like that. It's greyed out as MPEG2 and the slider is at 6 Mb/s. This is the format I used for capturing most of my vids, including the ones used to make the "Settings" videos in this guide.
Deflicker can be found from the main menu of the game by going to "options" -> "screen settings" or something like that. There is a deflicker in both Brawl and Melee (note that these are all Melee vids, and therefore you might not have the same opinion on Deflicker on vs off in Brawl). Deflicker I'm pretty sure is on by default.
Deflicker On
(1) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZw9besHNEY&fmt=22
(2) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_ez8HrvW_g&fmt=22
(3) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-g7lna7ZVo&fmt=22
(4) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gH6DLg3rio0&fmt=22
(5) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFPpGAqggMY&fmt=22
Deflicker Off
(1) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21ZViORD1Kw&fmt=22
(2) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Wc1wpW2lEw&fmt=22
(3) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwBzPgyPLww&fmt=22
(4) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nYgVkvCKxk&fmt=22
(5) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wafiL_Lp_ww&fmt=22
I'd have to say #2 and #4 are probably the best. #1 seems kinda fuzzy and the other 2 aren't supposed to be as good as them anyways. #1 might look better than #2 and #4 with different render settings, but I doubt it.
